When no answer is apparent

April 15, 1988

THERE are times when people find themselves in circumstances that seem too much to cope with. Maybe a trouble appears unhealable, unresolvable. But no matter how bad it appears, we don't have to suffer endlessly or wonder if we can make it to safer, surer ground. We can know with certainty that we can make it, because we have God, and God has created us. He governs His offspring in perfect harmony. This is a spiritual fact, a divine reality that we can prove. The Psalmist prayed: ``Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer. From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy.''1

No matter what form ``the enemy'' assumes in our lives -- sickness, poverty, hatred, neglect, whatever -- we have the right and ability to be free of it, because God, infinite good, has not created evil or sanctioned it. His spiritual likeness, man, is untouched by evil.

How can we know this? How can we feel it and prove it? By holding fast in prayer to the truth of our being -- by holding on to the reality of God's all-powerful love for us and of our likeness to Him. If we knew and acted on even one absolute spiritual fact of God and man's perfect relationship to Him, this would be enough to get us through, to prove at least to some extent that divine Truth always sustains man. Under all circumstances divine power is available to help. All circumstances.

The prophet spoke of God as reassuring us, ``When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.''2

There is a power to sustain, strengthen, and heal, and it is God's omnipotent power. Whether anyone else around us appears to know this or not, we can still hold fast to it and benefit from doing so. Even better, we can realize that infinite Love is holding us in its allness. We can never really, even momentarily, be separated from infinite Love and its benevolent care.

The Bible contains examples of individuals who appeared to be outnumbered by enemies, consumed by sickness, racked by sin, with apparently no way out. But there was and is always a way out, and that way is through an understanding of our true, eternal life. Jesus proved God to be man's very Life; he proved it for others and for himself. There is no too far, too late. There is only what God has decreed, and God has decreed only good for His beloved children.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, ``The history of Christianity furnishes sublime proofs of the supporting influence and protecting power bestowed on man by his heavenly Father, omnipotent Mind, who gives man faith and understanding whereby to defend himself, not only from temptation, but from bodily suffering.''3

It is important to take a firm mental stand and not be overwhelmed by temptation and suffering. We can do this on the strong spiritual basis that God has neither created nor permitted temptation or suffering. If it seems that our experience contradicts this truth, we can realize that absolute spiritual truth is truth and cannot, in actuality, be contradicted. Mrs. Eddy writes, ``The spiritual fact and the material belief of things are contradictions; but the spiritual is true, and therefore the material must be untrue.''4

We will feel spiritual power strengthening and upholding us as we turn to it. God holds us in His power. That is a fact. And we will never be let go. We can't ever be without divine Life, Truth, and Love, and that means we're never on our own trying to keep our heads above water.

God's man is above matter, material beliefs, and material so-called laws and reasoning. He is totally spiritual and whole, inseparable from God. Knowing this can strengthen and heal us, whenever we have a need and whatever that need is.

1Psalms 61:1-3. 2Isaiah 43:2. 3Science and Health, p. 387. 4Ibid., p. 289. You can find more articles like this one in the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly magazine. DAILY BIBLE VERSE: Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. Isaiah 45:22